"You had herin your arms?" Fallon ran his fingers through his hair, his eyes beginning to glow again.
Cain spat on the marble floor. "Naked, writhing, cl**axing, and ready for penetration, but she would not sire with me. Even after I bit her, because of him."
Fallon stumbled backward to hold on to the table again. "You've tasted her blood?"
"I am the direct descendant of the Dark Lord-of course I did!" Cain stared at Nuit for a moment and then closed his eyes, his nostrils flaring, ignoring Lilith's low, jealous hiss. "She willingly gave me her throat in the woods by her family's home. An entire Guardian team in the house, her lover about to commit suicide as he stood on the back porch. You have no concept... and for seven days I starved to keep that undiluted, sweet, fragrant elixir in my veins until it was impos�sible not to feed. I thought surely after that seduction bite she was mine, and siring would be imminent." Cain opened his eyes. "I must have his head on a pike!"
Storm clouds of sulfur began to gather in the ceiling as Cain swept away from Nuit to alight his throne. "I want hybrids to increase our mobility: were-demons, Amanthras, succubae, and incubi, anything from our realms and within my old armies of Nod on this mission. Black blood exchanges, human turns at record levels," Cain shouted, pounding the table and splashing blood under his fist. "I want his heart in ruins. His family decimated. Any and all Darkness within them brought to the surface of their beings one cell at a time! I want all that he held dear razed to the damned ground! Every footfall that he has taken tracked and erased from the planet. His Neteru essence washed away in a tide of blood!"
"Neteru essence,Your Eminence, what travesty do you speak!" Fal�lon said, dropping battle-length fangs. "He is no longer vampire?"
"He went into the Light!" Cain bellowed, sending bats into a frenzy above. "He married her in acathedral inbroad daylight -using aCovenant priest and the bond blinds us to where she is! He is backed by the Council of Neteru Kings!"
"Married her!" Fallon shouted, and then stormed away from the table, black smoke trailing him and streaming from his nose. "Not a vampire mate union? In a what! He has even inserted himself onto a Neteru Council of Kings?"
Lilith nodded and folded her arms, her eyes narrowed to gleaming slits.
"You heard me!" Cain shouted, pointing at Nuit and standing before his now-smoldering throne. "Much has transpired since your incarceration. Double jeopardy! My father's head. One Chairman- the very beginning of our lines. My replacement, another Chairman, slain by the sword in Rivera's hand! Our entire Council of Masters wiped out in Australia during a treacherous plot! Legions of demons and Lilim, slaughtered wholesale. The damned scattered;The Book of the Damned abducted and sent into the clutches of war�rior angels!"
"Warrior angelscolluded with him to take our book hostage?" Fal�lon leaned in toward Cain across the table. "How can this be, Your Eminence? Never in the history of Darkness has such a foul series of events beset our empire-"
"Then thatsonofahumanbitch takes the blade of Ausar, my Neteru bride, my empire in Nod, and marries her. Redress this injustice with me or return from whence you came, Nuit!" Cain thundered, making small rocks begin to fall around them.
Fallon Nuit stalked toward his old throne, his head held high, and spit blood on Carlos's name etched in the high, black marble back. "Give me a moment to draw my old powers unto me, and then, my ally and commander, consider it done!"
Carlos left a stunned family to walk into the golden obelisk that ap�peared as he shouted Ausar's name. Jose would have to cope. There was no time for a long discussion; it was about motion. In and out, and raising an army. Ausar met him in the brightly lit hallway wearing a session robe of white Egyptian cotton tied with a golden sash. "Cain-"
"We know. We are in session as you speak." Ausar stopped walking and put a heavy hand on Carlos's shoulder. "Before you go in to the archons, several realities must be discussed."
"I am so down for whatever, you have no idea," Carlos said in a low rumble, meeting Ausar's steady gaze.
"Adam has stood in your shoes. When you go in there, as you make your valid complaint, do not rub his nose in it by belaboring the pre�vious offenses of Cain against your wife."
Carlos rubbed his jaw, rolling his shoulders. In truth, he'd been so upset that he hadn't considered that. "Aw'ight. I hear you."
"No. Get it out, now, with me in this antechamber, and then go in there like a true general asking for the resources you require and for�mulating a strategy for us to win."
Carlos closed his eyes and allowed his head to drop back. "Ausar, man... while I was withmy wife?"
"Of what violation do you speak?" Ausar whispered through his teeth, causing Carlos to stare at him.
"He had her blood in his veins," Carlos muttered, sending his gaze to the large gold and alabaster Neteru Council of Kings doors. "When he took Dante's throne last night... It was the last night of my honeymoon." Carlos reinforced his grip on the blade so tightly the steel quivered. "If she's pregnant, if his energy rode mine... if I die battling this bastard this lifetime, I'll come back a thousand times to kill his ass again and again!"
Ausar briefly closed his eyes and paced away with his hands behind his back, then returned to Carlos. "Now you understand why Dante never came topside again during Adam's reign, and even feared to at�tempt to do so after Adam was in spirit. All of us had a price on Dante's wretched head for his offense against Eve in our brother's household. Then when Dante did resurface from the bowels of Hell, our Neteru Council of Kings received high angelic commands to stand down. ObtainingThe Book of the Damned was viewed as more of a priority than an ageless personal grudge. Our brother was de�nied for the greater good, just as he and his wife's dignity were pre�served in the old books-for the greater good-by leaving out the unfortunate circumstances of Cain's heritage. It would have shamed them. Know that we are all eager to avenge Adam, and now your cause also."
"It wasn't Damali's fault," Carlos said, eyes blazing. "The way this went down... It was so foul, man, there are no words."
Ausar's nostrils flared as blue-white flames licked their edges. Dropping his voice to a private, angry murmur, he kept a steady gaze on Carlos. "He violated the sanctity ofyour marriage bed? This I did not know!"
Carlos nodded, hot tears of frustration glittering in his eyes. "Man, how can I leave her, though, if this twisted shit plants? She didn't know. Damali thought she was just with me... thought it was over and done with between them, you feel me? I sensed it, she wasn't lying-the look in her eyes told me all I needed to know... she was blown away. My wife is so shook she couldn't even call the Isis into her grip. And, the more I think about it, even if I kill Cain's ass, he might still have the last laugh and I'll have to raise his heir." Carlos drew in a shuddering breath. "I don't know if I have it in me, man."
Ausar touched Carlos's shoulder. "This, too, was Adam's dilemma. He loved Eve so deeply that he refused to split his house asunder.That is strength."
"No," Carlos said, shaking his head."That is pain, my brother." He drew in a few more breaths. "Watching some other man's kid grow�ing in your woman's womb... watching her eyes looking down at that child with love but never fully able to look directly into yours again. Having some foul shit snap in that kid's psyche one day, 'cause you ain't his biological daddy-and then try to step to you after all those years, inyour house, aboutyour wife being his mother, and try to run your shit?"
Carlos began to pace, shaking his head in disbelief. "Then you can't slay the little motherfucker, because it will kill your wife-but you gotta take his bull? Oh... hell... no. I ain't the one. I can't do it."
He stopped and looked at Ausar hard. "It would have been differ�ent if she already came to me with a kid; I wouldn't have had a prob�lem with that, and would have been ready to take a bullet for it like it was my own. Wouldn't have cared if another brother and her got to�gether before I came on the scene. That shit happens every day on the planet. Even if we had broken up, and then had gotten back together, and something had gone down while we were apart-okay. Fine. Shit happens, and it ain't the baby's fault. She's mine; the kid would be, too. But the way this bullshit went down..." Carlos shook his head. "I can't deal."